1. Field of the Invention
Implementations of various technologies described herein generally relate to seismic data processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following descriptions and examples are not admitted to be prior art by virtue of their inclusion within this section.
Seismic exploration is widely used to locate and/or survey subterranean geological formations for hydrocarbon deposits. Since many commercially valuable hydrocarbon deposits are located beneath areas of land and bodies of water, various types of land and marine seismic surveys have been developed.
In a typical land or marine seismic survey, seismic sensors are installed in specific locations around an area of the earth in which hydrocarbon deposits may exist. Seismic sources, such as vibrators or air guns, may move across the area and produce acoustic signals, commonly referred to as “shots,” directed down to the earth, where they are reflected from the various subterranean geological formations. Reflected signals are received by the sensors, digitized, and then transmitted to a survey database. The digitized signals are referred to as seismic data. The ultimate aim of this process is to build a representation of the subterranean geological formations beneath the surface of the earth. Analysis of the representation may indicate probable locations of hydrocarbon deposits in the subterranean geological formations.
Full-waveform inversion (FWI) is one approach in analyzing the seismic data. Specifically, FWI is an approach to build a seismic velocity earth model that minimizes a misfit between seismic data received by sensors and predicted seismic data obtained from an earth model. Since the misfit is sensitive to both the amplitude and phase of the seismic data, FWI has the potential to deliver velocity earth models with higher resolution than conventional earth modeling techniques. Furthermore, given modern optimization techniques, FWI now has the potential to work with minimal user input. This has significant advantages over conventional velocity earth model building practices in complex areas such as salt provinces, which involve manually intensive workflows.